Guild Wars 2

Snowmoon.1758:

I actually HATE the word Scarlett. imagine that.

How do you think I feel? One of my characters is named Scarlet! ;__;
Except she’s my little kitten of the night mesmer~ I like her~

Xenon.4537:

On top of this, the stories delivered through each episode will no doubt find their way on to the internet. If someone wanted the backstory, they could find it for free. The only thing you would 100% have to pay your 200 gems for would be access to the rewards. Rewards thus far have been mini-pets, backpiece skins, and special ore nodes. Hardly required content. Hardly pay-to-win. If you want them, you can either get access to them for free by being there on time, or forking over two-and-a-half bucks to support the game.

Glad to see a level head on this “price-gouging” discussion. (Yeesh.)

It’s very likely the wiki and Living Story wiki map will get updates as time goes on, so even that content will be around for those who missed it.
As for the rewards, you’d normally pay 400-800 gems for some of the relevant decorative content from the gem store. These rewards will be available just like any of the prior meta-achievement bonuses would. Not missing a ruddy thing, there.
Also, this is where some of the challenging content is going to live. Apparently, Season 2 is giving us some of what we want -

Instanced challenges
Permanent content
Achievement-based rewards

for free.

The 200-gem is a minor thorn, if you intend to miss the game for two whole weeks. I do not, and I’m starting to get my hopes up.

Cyrill Faust.9340:

… it’kitten or miss in most groups weather the boss is positioned right to use 3.

Edit- why is (H) (I) (T) kittened out?

lawl censorship.

It is … hit or miss.
Remove " … " and see why it doesn’t like your kitten. :P
Such a goofy system.

So.. for $10, you get 4 episodes, theoretically 2 months of content (or 2 days, depending on your pace). 200 gems is about.. 13 gold? Not that hard to scrounge up.
It might be a task for newer players to catch up, but the content is there. For players to stay current, it takes all of two minutes to log in, get credit, then come back when you want. That’s fantastic.

pdavis.8031:

Edit: I don’t care one way or another on the issue, I stopped caring after seeing the same thread revived 15,043 times.

It’s not as bad as the “zomg i solve teh zerker meta” threads, of which there are two currently running. Yeesh.

I’ve seen some good ideas on both sides about dueling, but yes, it’ll be low on the priority list, if ever.

So, just hit 30 last night with my new character.

…and I’m realizing how much I hate, loathe, despise this new trait acquisition system. I thought a previous patch had tamed some of the more insidious tasks, but I was mistaken.

While 100% Harathi isn’t out of my league as a level 30-36 character, it’s a massive, lengthy, herculean chore to get one trait. For finishing an entire zone, I should get the entire friggin’ suite of Adept traits on that trait line, not just one.

Worse, I now have to come up with a road map along with my buddy on what goals we want to finish, which is pulling us away from Personal Story.

tl;dr – Trait hunt bad!

/facepalm

For anyone who ever argues for a subscription, just BUY 800 gems a month. Seriously. You support the game and get a nice kickback of whatever gems will get you.

The amount of effort it takes to make the specific UNID-color dyes is pretty harsh anyway, so it’d be much easier to get them off the trading post while they’re cheap.
I’m still sour about the laurel change. 5:1 ratio is just a backhanded slap, but there’s plenty of supply on the TP right now.

Arikyali.5804:

Aciera Moonflare – Iron legion, of the Flare warband.

Ooh, Flare. I like that one. }]:3

Taygus.4571:

You can’t really blame uplevels.
Some of those people are actually new, and have as much right to experience the blitz as you do.

Yup. And I had a level 22 in whites and blues who stayed upright more than the rest of the group doing the Flame Legion boss in a few runs. Still got gold both times. “Upscales” aren’t the problem.

I have a very narrow hope that a real home instance, player housing, will come out of expanding into a new area. Almost like a frontier cabin, and we can gradually build it up to a full home with trophies and a garden~

Doubt it, but that’s what I hope for.

radioAspen.6829:

No, they sound pretty bad on paper too. That’s what has been so baffling about this whole thing.

The statements regarding trait redesign and their execution are in conflict.
Sure, I get they wanted to revive skill hunts from GW1, but as a part of their “we want players to experiment with builds” is utterly destroyed by the way traits are suppressed by having to go in weird directions to get them.

If they were based on rep quests or something else, that’d be different, but the tasks are just nonsense.

Unidentified dyes are still available on the trading post (pretty cheap at 22-24 silver each). So if the recipe on the wiki says you still need them, that’s where to go.

Hope that helps!

Vol.7601:

To me, the forge serves only one purpose – to acquire precursors. No one in their right mind would gamble on the forge for the purposes of finding named exotics.

So I don’t see an increase in named exotics to be of an improvement that Anet would advertise.

The improvements I expected (or still expect) is a way to help balance the RNG aspect of precursors.

For example, for every combination ‘failure’ (no precursor received), you get a token. At a certain # of tokens – let’s say 1000, you can change that in for a guaranteed precursor.

That way, people who are unlucky enough to go on cold streaks end up getting a precursor.

I’ve been saying this in a few other threads, too. Four stacks of 250 precursor tokens = 1 precursor. Make it happen, ANet.

silvermember.8941:

You know what, that is totally not a terrible idea. At all, but you have to make it so that it doesn’t level as fast as regular crafting. Similar to magic find but a little harder since the purpose of it is to suck out gold from the economy.

Even better, tie Mystic Forge “XP” to something else, like Magic Find. Or permanent XP/Karma % gains.

Or, heck, make it really weird and have a Mystic Forge Magic Find (MFMF, or MF Squared!) stat that goes up as you continue to use it.

Dually noted.
As someone who hit Master Crafter a long time ago, the crafting license comes too little too late for convenience.
And a 3-trade cap? Psh. Let me pay for an 8-trade cap and have one character who can do it all, and I’ll at least give it a listen.

I’d definitely like to see character sizes on the character select screen that are actually proportional to their in-game size. Not even charr-specific, just in general.
Doubly so in Personal Story cutscenes.

Prophet.6257:

Plus he’s the ONLY male character in the biconics. The ladies in my guilds strongly disapprove.

True! It’s actually really irritating that there’s such a gap in character design. If I recall correctly, aside from Canach, there hasn’t even been a relevant male to the Living Story. And no one remembers Spinach, er I mean, Canach.

Adding to my wishlist:
Relevant Norn to the world stage. The Sons of Svanir didn’t even make it into the “alliance” hooplah of Season 1. It’s been something of a Sylvari salad bar so far, and that needs to change.

Name in use already.7294:

Just 1 thing I’m really fussed about, and that’s

1. Don’t be afraid to kill off some main characters."

Not so easy to do, unless those characters are introduced through more dynamic means. Which means, sadly, Trehearne’s not gonna get eaten by a dragon.
…But Brahm might!

Because of production cost/involvement of reviving Logan/Rytlock/et al, first-gen main character participation in upcoming story is very unlikely. It’s much easier to weave a continuing narrative with characters that aren’t embedded in the rest of the game.

It’d be even better if we got some more cutscene art, too. Like one of Brahm shoving Taimi out of harm’s way as a gigantic dragon maw bears down on them. …Can we sense I don’t like Brahm and want him eaten by an elder dragon? =P

Zet.9130:

I’ve always been against mounts until I heard someone make a good argument for them. Because,
I want a Quaggan mount!

facepalm If he gets a Quaggan, I get a Kodan! Or maybe a mosh pit of skritt. A mosh skritt.

A positive, constructive player base.

…Whut? I’m not getting that any more than the other top-10 wish lists above. =P

Srs bzns though:
Looking forward to fulfilled rumors of permanent content.
A new zone
Extension of the Personal Story path post Zhaitan and Treesus.
Better WvW support
A new race (would certainly sell those gems!)
Better storytelling and less Mary Sues
Better reward structures (unique rewards for content based on deeds, not RNG)
(Corollary: Precursors attainable via tasks or with unique items obtained through unique tasks, not RNG.)
Smarter encounter design

If I can’t have a mount, can I at least have a centaur Lancer as a pet? And maybe ride it?

tigirius.9014:

Yep and we’ve already seen how that affects certain games. It’s happened to other mmo’s as well in the past but the most recent best display of how it can adversely affect a game is D3. The sole difference between D3 and GW2 is that D3’s RMTAH directly took payments of real money for items in the AH rather than required an exchange system.

We’ve given them all kinds of ways of changing the game so that it’s no longer a disaster in the economic focus of the TP how rewards are no longer restricted from commonly completed daily processes but they’ve ignored them all.

This isn’t a new problem it’s been going on since launch, but at time goes on and they focus on what people are saying in Reddit rather than these forums even their own suggestions forums are ignored, it’s getting worse and people are starting to wonder why they should even bother.

(I know you didn’t say these things I’m just adding general statements to my agreement with what you said)

Heh, funny thing about Diablo 3. They considered their RMAH a success, for all its weirdness. Which means it made them money. But, they figured P2W was hurting the game, and it was. D3 turned into building up increasingly absurd piles of gold just to buy something. The new loot system and subsequent salvage makes it a little more interesting, though still a been-there/done-that grind.

Not to say that real money exchanges are doomed to hurt a game’s progression, but the game needs to release content that brings players to the game, not just the game’s store. Give meaning to the items on sale behind gameplay and lore, and give alternate versions through actual content participation and challenges.

While not a sterling example, I can remember where I got my Desert Rose back piece from, because I was having fun on Sanctum Sprint, then opened the RNG reward and saw it there. A minor Squee-moment. We need more squee-moments.

Y’know what would be fantastic? Treating the Mystic Forge as its own crafting discipline, including XP bonuses.
Or, in the very least, list the recipes we’ve discovered so we can recreate them. Not that /wiki is a huge bother, but the game should have more internal support of Zommoros’ Toilet.

Plok.5873:

The dragon finisher is nice, yet a little over the top. To compensate for this, I hereby suggest the Utterly Underwhelming Personal Story Finisher. Tadaaa!

Works analogous to the PS, once you’re half through the activation time, suddenly out of nowhere Trahearne shows up, gently pushes you aside and finishes your downed target himself.
Then he’ll follow you around for several minutes and tell you elaborately about his Wyld Hunt, his self-doubt, his childhood and how This won’t end well.

While we’re at it, what about the Court Jester costume / skin? I already got the eligible guild rank.

I… Wow.. So much bitter.
And it’s deserved. =P I had to stop myself from laughing in public from this one.
The forums would flip their kitten if they saw a Pact Leader finisher. Golf claps, sir. Golf claps.

Sartharina.3542:

Rauderi.8706:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Also, the peak condi set everyone mentions is the Warrior, but the warrior causes its condi damage at melee, not range.

Rifle. Arms.

Even traited, the rifle doesn’t stack bleeds fast enough.

I wasn’t proposing it as a bleed build, actually. I think sword is more for that, anyway. I think the bigger point is, a rifle warrior, even with Arms and Strength training, is likely to tick on bleeds that don’t count for as much, given the condition caps.

Operant conditioning. =P
Consequently, I tend to drool when I see laurels. Is that a bad thing? >.>"

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Also, the peak condi set everyone mentions is the Warrior, but the warrior causes its condi damage at melee, not range.

Rifle. Arms.

Granted, if you’re using a rifle as a warrior, then you’re fighting one of the game’s many, many melee-hating bosses.

Glad to see such a vigorous and thoughtful discussion. (A wee bit tl;dr for me just jumping in, but here goes.)

First, the idea of mega-conditions is sound, but it’s problematic with some traits, like necro condition-healing, unless it’s coded very specifically to account for that. Then consider what happens to the mega-condition if the stack cap is met again. Still lots of calculations.

The big problem with the condition cap is mostly on the boss/mega-boss end. And there’s a somewhat simple fix, based on a tag/status that already exists. Since the primary PvE concern for conditions are those creatures with Defiant, I’d suggest an addition to the status.

Just like how Defiant reduces Blind and Weakness durations (a set of calculations already in place, certain damaging conditions should be altered to reduce their duration, probably by half, but double the damage. Or make it a quarter duration and quadruple the damage. …which sounds like a good idea until it hits me that many conditions are 1-second bleeds. (I wouldn’t propose this for confusion or torment. I rarely see those go up to 25, even in large groups.) And when I think of poisons and burns, I’m more inclined to take this back to the drawing board.

If it’s purely a technical issue, then my thought becomes: system checks for condition cap. If true, apply a percentage of condition damage immediately. That percentage could be 100%, it could be 50%. As it is, condition builds need something to accommodate their actual damage output.

Siara Snowbane. Suitably lore appropriate. A little “soft” for a Charr. But I like it!
If I had to put a number on it, 9/10.

My new ranger babeh, Eidol Soulthunder, Thunder warband, Blood Legion.

To tack on some backstory, years ago, he tried to pull a dare much like the Crush cubs did. Getting attacked by Ascalonian ghosts left white marks on his claws and muzzle, and a long, lingering resentment toward ghosts and spirits. It’s much to his chagrin that nature spirits follow him around, actually helping him in his work to push the unliving back into the proper cycle of life.

Caedo.1469:

Surely after generations it would become very difficult to think of names outside of what had already been used.

o.O It is.
I thought I was being original for the Mist warband (a group known for their dual reverence/dismissive perception of death, Ash Legion), but it turns out there’s a few NPCs with that already. Grr. :\

A little more searching, but I haven’t seen a Thunder warband. Blood Legion. (Implied Blood and Thunder jokes here.)

rincewind.9528:

Well, I don’t like the dueling idea.
But If they add an “auto-block dueling invites” feature, it’s fine for me.
It’s pretty annoying when you’re minding your own business and people keep spamming duel invites.
“No, I don’t want to duel my lvl 5 newby char against your lvl 80 clad in epics char.”

PD: QD will become Goldshire 2.0. Mark my words. Then we only gonna need the ERPs to come. =P

Pffffbaahahahahah! I laugh because it’s true. I still don’t know why they don’t duel IN Stormwind.

storiessave.3807:

2. The majority of players have obviously voiced their opinions on the zerg epidemic. Most don’t want the current population on world bosses. No, it doesn’t matter if you make them harder. The only ones that should require even close to 100 players to down are Tequatl and the 3-Headed Wurm. The rest of the bosses were just fine with less players, were designed with less players in mind, and having 100+ people and all their skill effects on your screen is hell even on high-end computers. This is not an improvement.

You like having your entire screen filled with players and not even being able to see any AoEs or, hell, the boss itself? Good for you. Everyone I’ve talked to hates it. Personally, I stopped doing world bosses about a month ago. It was fun back when the most we had on a boss was 30-40 at the very most. Now it’s pathetic and boring. I’m not the only one that gave up world bosses because of the Megaserver, either.

World bosses were designed with a smaller zerg in mind – that’s why they aren’t scaling well. In order to actually make them a challenge (though not too much so, like Tequatl), you would have to completely re-design every single world boss, Karka Queen included. You would also have to make sure you had a good balance between difficulty and easymode – make them too difficult, people get angry because people who don’t read chat will make bosses fail. Make them too easy, people get angry because bosses meant to be more difficult than mere champions are too easy. Why do that when you can lower the softcap on server maps, have smaller zergs, and not have to do all that work to change them?

So much this. I hopped in on a Karka Queen run (something my friend has missed 5 times in a row because it spawns randomly and dies too quickly…) and there were so many players on it the actual boss didn’t load. I got rolled over and Downed in what seemed to be random. Funny on one end, massively irritating on the other.

Xenon.4537:

Even if converting more gems in to gold is good for the gold/gem market, it still stinks of greed. It still requires people to pay real money to make more gems. Advertising it just looks like a cheap, desperate cash grab.

On one hand, it’s nice to know the game supports moving away from gold-selling as an out of game market, and it’s nice to know the exchange rate.

On the other hand, Xenon, +1, exactly right.

Lightsbane.9012:

how exactly would you handle wvw then? or did people forget that there’s actual wars in a game called guild wars..

No need to be hostile. :P It’s actually a good question!

Server merges could be good for WvW, by upping the populations on low-pop servers and providing more competition. Typically, when a server merge is about to take place, they do free server moves to the low pop servers as incentive to buff their numbers. They already sort of did this once when the latest WvW season hit, so if they had to pare down servers, they could certainly do it again.

Behellagh.1468:

I think it relates to the perceived amount of added content. A box expansion that comes out after 18-24 months MUST contain a lot of content to warrant a box. It must take weeks or even months to explore all of it to death. DLC, that’s just one little thing. That’s horse armor. Free updates, mustn’t contain anything worthwhile if they are giving it away for free. It’s all psychological, it’s how PC gamers have been conditioned.

Big box content gets murdered in about a month. Then the ‘hardcore’ peeps will be crowing about “nothing to do” again. Eking out content the way Living Story does at least gets people coming back once in a while.

Granted, as someone above said, a big box release would draw a lot of attention for the game. I’d love to see a proper expansion.

Becka Williams.4978:

Why not server merges, than? That would make more sense than completely destroying the concept of servers.

It always did baffle me why they don’t do this, not just in GW2, but in lots MMOs. Though I figure it’s got a lot to do with server identities, much like how we lost a lot of that identity when megaservers hit.

Though, there’s going to be no new idea that shows up in this thread that hasn’t been hit on in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-Questions-MegaServer
Suppose 40 pages is tl;dr though. :\

Kibazuka.1390:

…

Wow.. Just, wow. Forum rules notwithstanding, I should say something really mean right now. But I’ll just go with “You’re wrong.” and tell you that your counter-assumptions do what the popular phrase says they do.

I’m definitely not an advocate of a 50-man beatdown of content that does well with 5 to 10 people. (Not that most of the bosses are complicated anyway.) This so-called 11111 gameplay comes from huge population loads, but it also had to do with overly-simple boss mechanics which stifle half the weapon skills and refuse to make use of the other half. Thusly, autoattackAFK11111.

As for guesting to another server, well than the Six I don’t need to do that bother anymore! …Shame about the RPers and guilds and soforth that got kittened in the process. :\

We need home worlds back in cities, smaller server shards, and, with any grace, districts.

Meluna.1764:

I would like to ask to reduce the amount of people per map. Drastically. Right now, every heart is a zerg, even in the middle of nowhere. Events are just a run to tag anything at all while mobs die as they spawn. The idea of making the world more lively was commendable but every single part of PvE is now a zergfest. Kinda overdid it a bit.

Yeah, seeing map caps of 75+ isn’t working right now. I think I’ve seen an entire map pile on Ulgoth, and it was just ridiculous. I’d say drop it to 50, but then Teq and Wurm would probably be spread too thin on people…

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

People had been asking for an ‘underflow’ system for a while, so that underpopulated maps could have a chance at no longer being empty.
How quickly these forums seem to forget that…

The Megaserver does accomplish that, though as it has been pointed out already, it needs tweaking, which they have been doing with varying degrees of success, I believe.

Yeah, I’d rather not go back to a time where I couldn’t do events/bosses/temples because no one was on my map. The ‘underflow’ part works out great, actually.
It just needs a few tweaks for the upper end, which has been mentioned at length in other threads. (Which is why this one is likely to get closed soon. :P)

It’s worth noting that, in MMO development, PvP (and therefore dueling) has been something of an afterthought. It definitely was for WoW, and most other games seem to have their skills tamed after they consider the influence on players in PvP.

Later MMO developers will, of course, get wise to PvP demands and accommodate them, but there are very few (RIP Warhammer) that feel like they developed PvP concurrently with their class design.

Only at about 120MF here (haha, “only”, such a newb), but I’ve noticed it does seem to help in a few parts. I dunno about anyone else, but I’ve been getting more T6 from salvaging (fine kits). Can any of the high MF people confirm?

Also, 500+ MF. …You’ve won GW2. Done. Grats.

Just started a new character a few days ago. Even with a level 20 scroll, I feel like my experience is stagnated. I have the skills I wanted to buy already (missing two higher-cost ones that aren’t vital to my build), and I’m kinda ticked that a build I could make work at level 40 got pushed back to 60.
Since I’m playing along with a friend (warband!), it hasn’t felt like a huge grind, but without him exploring and battling beside me, I can definitely see the play experience being increasingly dull.
Even when I had a grandfather’d pre-80, I was staring at my screen, groaning “C’mon, get to level X” already, and then “C’mon, get to level X+6, I get two skill points, then.”
It wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t liberating. It was deliberately hampering my growth for no reason. :\

Behellagh.1468:

I’m going to be called a white knight but here goes.

In my experience, if you don’t like the food or service at a restaurant and after numerous complaints to the owners, nothing changes, you stop going there.

What you don’t do is set up across the street from them on a folding chair with a bullhorn telling the arriving customers that the service and food stink and would be so much better if the owners just listen to you. If the place is still in business and they still get an decent clientele of regulars, where is your proof that what the owners are doing is wrong? Seems to be working out for them. Parking lot is always full and people seem to be enjoying themselves as they leave after their meal, only to return again several times during the month or even week.

I know. You all wanted something different. Something closer to what you had with the first game. It’s been over a year and a half since it went live. It doesn’t look as if your comments and complaints are making any headway. So when do you give up and move on, or move back since Guild Wars is still running? When do you stop jousting windmills?

So accept what good you can find in the game now, and by some of the posts it seems very little, or look for something better. I never understood how people can stay in abusive relationships and I’m seeing some of the same signs here. We’ll give ArenaNet another chance to see if Living Story 2 is any better. Maybe it’ll be different this time.

Honestly I think there’s a calling for therapists who specialize in getting people to leave MMOs they no longer like but can’t leave for some reason.

It’s called “escalation of commitment.” While not an official DSM-V diagnosis (at least I hope it isn’t =P), it does explain why long-timers malinger and rant on something they’ve invested so much time and effort into.

I don’t do anything special to get the cash, just the same thing I always do in MMOs.

Materials.

Playing a lot of alts, I end up in mid-level zones a lot more often than most, and those crafting mats sell for a good chunk. I don’t try to flip the trading post or chain run dungeons, so I’m not rich by any means, but I have no complaints. Even had enough to risk it on the Unidentified Dye spike of 2014. (Had I taken off work that day, I would’ve scored an easy 70 gold once the price spiked.)

Every so often, I purge half the materials from my collection, and that nets me a few dozen gold once I’m done.

And, for some strange reason, selling blues and whites for low level earns a silly amount of extra silver.

Brendar.3548:

It’s strange, people keep complaining about gold sellers, yet I receive very few whispers. Even after the megaserver update. I guess i get put into the lucky server where they aren’t there?

I haven’t had many either, except for one time I was in Gendarren while Vigil Keep was still the gate center. FFFFFFF-

It was relentless. Four different accounts spamming all at once. I can definitely see why people are upset, if this happens all the time.

Happens a whole lot more in FF14 though. I’ve started talking back to them as friends~ Doesn’t help. ;_;

StinVec.3621:

They’ve still not gotten it right, which I suspect is due to a combination of a lack of effort and caring and a high amount greed. One can only guess. :\

Considering many other facets of the game in what seems to be a “release first patch (much) later” approach, I’m going to go with lack of effort/coordination. :\

I accept the microtransaction model as a whole, but I’ve always felt that developers never turn their special currency into the same value as physical currency when determining value. Are there assessments done that support an 800 gem ($10) skin/outfit cost? Why not 240 gems ($3) and expect an increase in sales? (It would have to triple sales in that specific case, which isn’t likely considering prior research on microtransactions.) Ideally, there’s a point in the profit curve between a small percentage buying big ticket items (outfits and skins) and the masses buying cheap items (transmutation charges and what upgrade extractors should be, but aren’t).

Precursor weapons, 1600 gems each.

/fleefromrottentomatos!

Lankybrit.4598:

Another principle I have is not to spend any more $$ on the game, so sorry, that doesn’t work for me.

But you’d encourage other people to spend more $$ on the game?

/tilt

If this is some weird form of boycott, you’re doing it wrong. =P

As for me, I don’t find the gem-to-gold ratio favorable enough yet, so I’m keeping those gems for something else. It’s whatev.

William Bradley Knight.2609:

They should change the Boss Blitz so that once the silver timer expires there is only 10 more minutes to get bronze before the event fails entirely and nobody gets any loot at all. That would get people’s attention and folks would be forced to figure it out.

Go ahead and rage at me now… :-)

I dunno if that would rage. What would rage is if the instance kicked everyone out to Divinity’s Reach after the timer ran out so it could reset/recreate the server shard for a fresh group run. =P (Maybe make it a 20 minute Bronze timer, to be nice.)